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What Does it Mean to Do Public History in Asia?

Author: Na Li, Associate Professor of History at the National University of Singapore.


Over the past twenty years, public history has come of age. The convergence of media technologies has changed the manner and scale of how publics access, interpret, present, and preserve historical knowledge. Old binaries of producer/consumer and professional/amateur have blurred in a post-colonial, digital world. Historical authority, which was monopolized by academics in the mid-twentieth century, has become more democratized. A more liberal and expansive characterization sees public history as a process by which the past is constructed into history and a practice which has the capacity for involving people as well as nations and communities in the creation of their own histories.

Public history in Asia has followed a somewhat different trajectory. It is more technologically driven; it pushes on disciplinary boundaries; and it calls for strong regional collaborations. Here we face a critical moment to experience history, to reflect upon how history is reinterpreted, contested, and commemorated in the public space. We also stand at another threshold to revisit the idea of the “public,” and how historians confront an evolving, thinking public yearning for a more complex understanding of the past. The establishment of a regional public history association for intellectual dialogues, project collaborations, and pedagogical exchanges around public history has become an urgent necessity.

What Does it Mean to Do Public History in Asia?, the first public history conference on the regional scale, co-hosted by the University of Chicago and the National University of Singapore, took place from February 24 to 25 (2026) at the University of Chicago Hong Kong Campus. More than twenty participants from various countries presented and discussed their work of public history through four key themes — archives, memory, and the politics of history; ritual, space, and living heritage; how media shape public understanding of history; community, identity, and everyday public history. The discussions provided a platform for public historians, educators, and practitioners to offer snapshots of how history is used, misused, or underused in the public sphere across Asia.

Photo source: The University of Chicago Hong Kong Campus, February 25, 2026.

The conference also sought to address the public history deficit in universities and promote the study of the subfield in institutions of higher learning across Asia. Currently there are two established public history programs in Asia. One involves undergraduate and MA programs in public history at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. The other is the MA program in applied and public history at the National University of Singapore. Meanwhile, around twenty public history related courses started to emerge in China in the past decade after the National Public History Faculty Training Programs in 2014, 2015, and 2019. The conference brought the teaching of public history into sharp focus, provoking historians to think about how they can develop courses and programs to stimulate the study and practice of history outside the academy and in the public sphere.

With brainstorming sessions spanning two days, the participants identified key issues and challenges in developing public history, and discussed actionable collective steps towards establishing a regional association of public history. The conference represented the first collective thinking on public history in Asia, which paved the way for future dialogues and collaborations.


Na Li, Associate Professor of History at the National University of Singapore. Her research focuses on public history and urban preservation. During her decade-long work in China, Na Li has pioneered the field of public history in China. She has written three monographs, Kensington Market: Collective Memory, Public History, and Toronto’s Urban Landscape (University of Toronto Press, 2015), Public History: A Critical Introduction (Peking University Press, 2019), and Seeing History: Public History in China (De Gruyter, 2023).

OpenEdition suggests that you cite this post as follows:
Bridging Editor (April 7, 2026). What Does it Mean to Do Public History in Asia? IFPH-FIHP. Retrieved April 10, 2026 from https://doi.org/10.58079/160s9


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